And.

Hi folks.  Really sorry to drop off the earth like that.

As I said in the comments to the last post, I'm so impressed with you all.  Outstanding thoughts; which deserve good response.

What happened on my end was a blizzard and two deaths.

It was a really good blizzard; took some work getting through.  In the middle, Spice's grandmother passed away, in Colorado.  Spice had lived with her extensively while growing up, so she was a really significant person; Spice needed to go there.  Age and an inoperable tumor.

Then a few days before Christmas my father "stopped breathing"; as my sister so gracefully put it.  She was with him; as she had been for years.  He was 97; his body at the "One Hoss Shay" point.  His mind was plenty clear; and the day before, he'd decided to refuse all his medications, except a little for pain.  He just stopped.

It was not a surprise, but I found it more unbalancing than I'd expected.  It's just been taking some time to cope, and find some balance again.

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Your comments on the last post wound up giving me an idea, which I'll bring up next post.  Something that might actually help, a new response to the problem; whatever it is.

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And this morning, it's actually 3 deaths now, not 2.  We have been raising two kittens this year, to replace a well loved tom that failed to come home from a periodic ramble.  The black one, named "Henrí" by Smidgen, after the video cat- just mysteriously died; no sensible cause obvious.

He'd been an outrageously healthy kitten and "teenage" cat; I'd commented multiple times that he was the original cat that curiosity killed.  He was into everything; but was also very bright, agile, and very sweet.  He never clawed you on purpose.

He came home after an absence of a day, and was not "himself".  Lethargic all day, at bedtime I noticed he was having some muscle tremors; Spice noticed he had no pupillary response.  Which means very serious problems.  We made sure he was warm.  No sign he was in pain.  Spice held his paw and kept him warm in bed, hoping that as cats often do he'd pull through it.   Years ago, with another teenage cat at the vet's; having him stapled back together from a run-in with a big mama coon, the vet let it slip that among vets the expectation is "with cats, if all the pieces are just in the same room- they get well."

But not this time; he passed away at 1 am.  No, no way to get him to a vet.

Our house animals are members of the family; no, he wasn't a human; but we teach Smidgen that our cats and dogs are "persons".

And they are.